The Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center is the place to get it, and that begins with check-in. The office is inside the temple, and I almost committed the no-no of walking in with my shoes on.But I caught myself, which made it the first time I had checked into an accommodation in my socks. In a yellow-walled office, a woman named Trish handed me a key, but I couldn't take my eye off a bumper sticker affixed to the filing cabinet: "Whatever you do . . . is it necessary, truthful and kind?"

What you do get: an eight-sided, one-room yurt (plus bathroom) that's nothing fancy but clean enough to walk across barefoot. You get a kitchenette, twin futons raised a couple of inches off the floor, a skylight and a small deck facing the woods. And, oh yes, inner peace.

Key in hand and shoes back on, I headed to my yurt, a simple hut at the edge of a dense gathering of trees.Thubten Jigme Norbu, an Indiana University professor emeritus better known as the Dalai Lama's older brother, started the center in 1979 not only to preserve Tibetan and Mongolian cultures but to "promote interfaith peace and harmony," according to the center.

Of course, the place to do that, as well as stimulate the harmony within, is in the quiet of nature. Though this place isn't quite in the middle of nowhere -- single-family homes surround the property, and there's a Wendy's two miles away -- amid the thick trees and classic Buddhist architecture, things still feel a world away from the chain hotels of downtown Bloomington.In the quiet and stillness, you slowly come to expect more of yourself -- more thought, more reflection, more deliberation. It slows you to the point that when finding a spider scurrying away for dear life on your yurt's lime-green wall, you shrug and go about your business. All creatures have their place.